There are inevitable comparisons between vampire shows. From True Blood to Vampire Diaries, there are always moments, characters, and lore that overlap or diverge. But before either of those, there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that show was a tough act to follow. In our minds, TVD, while tonally different, is as witty in its own way. Executive producer Julie Plec told Forever Young Adult that she too worships at the altar of Buffy — which is why Damon (Ian Somerhalder) is so fun to write for.The sassy slayer and the snarky Salvatore have some things in common, according to Julie. “Damon gets to be our Buffy. Damon gets to have the sassy comeback, and the fun lingo, and sarcasm, and the over-the-top dialog because Damon himself is so cool that he can get away with it,” she says. It’s true. Cool guys can pull anything off. Trust us; we’ve tried to joke about puppy blood while making our eyes really wide, but it doesn’t have the same effect.

Julie also talked about stumbling a bit with Alaric’s (Matt Davis) character, who eventually became a vampire hunter without any prey. “He was a great character who we hit a little bit of a roadblock with him in the second season, in that he came in with a very strong purpose, which was to be a vampire hunter but there were no vampires to hunt at a certain point because he became friends with Damon, and friends with Stefan, and then starting dating Jenna — so who's he going to hunt?” says Julie. “So, as a storyteller, we fumbled a little bit on his character and it took us a little while to recover from that to give him a purpose and a point of view. And one of the reasons why this last season I love so much for him is that he finally found his way as a guardian to our kids, but then also we got to explore his dark side and then actually capitalize on his dark side and return him to a form of what he actually entered the show to be, which was a vampire slayer.”

We love Alaric, but, yes, he could’ve used a few Buffy lessons of his own.

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"We’re all wounded. We carry our wounds around with us throughout life and eventually they kill us. Things happen that leave a mark in space, in time… in us." ~ Brenda Chenowith